Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Today, almost 90 years after Vida Halliburton's eyes glanced upon the gold band around her finger, the company that took the family name is now a vast multinational with operations in more than 120 countries. It enjoys a remarkably close relationship with the Bush administration whose Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was its CEO between 1995 and 2000, and holds no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars. Last year it made $2.6bn (£1.3bn) in profits from revenues of $22.6bn.

But Halliburton also comes with plenty of controversy and the company has been at the centre of numerous inquiries over alleged accounting malpractice, suspicious payments to officials and overcharging.

While Congress was barely able to muster a "what a shame" for blatant American cronyism, Congress did find the move of Halliburton's headquarters to Dubai beyond the morality of good behaviour, Democrats leading the folly:

But news of the proposed move, announced at the weekend, has brought an immediate and bitter backlash. A number of senior Democrats have accused the company of nothing less than a blatant attempt to avoid both paying US taxes and the heat of the ongoing federal investigations into its business operations. How could a company that had benefited from so many government contracts, they asked, simply up and leave? There were vows that Congress would launch new investigations.